


D.P.O.

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [56]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, X-Files OctoberFicFest 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22076833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: How Mulder and Scully came to go to Oklahoma.
Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [56]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/249118
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	D.P.O.

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: DPO

It was easy to trap a Mulder, if one knew what kind of bait to use. Scully set a newspaper in her area, deliberately obscuring the headline with a file folder. Nothing attracted Mulder like something he thought she was hiding from him. Of course she didn’t believe in the paranormal, but neither did she have faith in coincidence. Five people killed by lightning strikes in one town was ridiculously improbable. She didn’t even need to calculate the odds; she felt the weight of zeroes warping the fabric of the universe. There was something strange happening in Oklahoma. 

Mulder’s faith in the weird had led them on many pilgrimages. She had debunked his holy relics and recorded their provenance in their cabinet of curiosities. Even their lived experience was apocryphal. But sometimes he needed a star to guide him, and Scully had always been carrying her lantern through the streets, looking for an honest man. Everything looked like the North Star to a man sequestered in the shadows. Mulder blundered into the glow, imagining himself the lamplighter instead of the moth.

When she came in the next morning, he was reading it as deliberately as possible, his feet propped up on the desk, the paper fanned ostentatiously in front of his face. He said nothing.

“Morning,” she said. 

“Morning,” he retorted, as if it were a challenge. Scully stifled a smirk. 

“Enjoying the paper?” she asked.

“You might be amazed at the newsworthy things that happen in small towns, Scully,” he said. “You ever been to Oklahoma?”

“I can’t recall,” she said. 

“Well, where we’re going, lightning doesn’t strike twice, but it does strike five times,” he said dramatically, kicking his feet off the desk and tossing the paper down dramatically. 

“Mulder, the odds against that,” she began, but Mulder, like Han Solo, refused the impossible. She reeled him in on a smeary headline, satisfied with her catch.


End file.
